And then comes the terrible December day, after Christmas, when the darkness is always early and my fingers have a chilblain on every finger from the cold, and I am feeling lonely because my sister is stepping out now every night, they walk in the streets and they talk, and she comes back to Essex Street with her cheeks red from the cold and red from happiness also, and she tells me what they talked about but still I am left out. I am not feeling it is just the two of us anymore, and I know I have to make room for him in my heart, and Sam is a good man, so I know I can, and I am happy for her. But I feel pushed away, and I make a mistake not to interrupt her happiness, so I don’t say to her what I want to say, about what is going on with Jacobs and how every day now he makes me afraid when he passes by my place where I am sitting at my machine, and he touches me and brushes up against me like it is an accident, but it is no accident, and twice when he brushes by me and pushes himself against me I feel his hard thing poking me in my back, and it makes me feel ashamed, like it is my fault because I took that extra money the first time. And I don’t tell my sister.

And then comes this night, two days after Christmas, when she is going to walk with Sam, and I tell her I will go home when I am finished with the last waist in the pile, then I see I am the last one in the row and the machines are all quiet, and I hand stitch the last turn to make it right to fix a little mistake my sister made so nobody will ever notice, because I am good at fixing, and then I step into the toilet before I go to the cloakroom, and when I am coming out of the toilet, I feel something brush me in the back and it is Jacobs, and he puts his hot hands on my bosoms from behind me and he starts to rub me and pinch my bosoms through my shirtwaist, and I am pushing him and struggling to get away, but he holds me tighter and rubs himself against me and he kicks the door closed behind him and there we are alone in the toilet and even though I cry out there is nobody to hear me. And he is talking to me, first in a very sweet voice, like a mother talking to her baby, and he says he loves the way I am teasing him always, and don’t I want this too, isn’t this what I want, I make him crazy with my teasing, and I feel his hardness pushing at my bottom, and he has moved me into the corner by the sink and then he takes my shoulders and he forces me to turn around to face him, and then he pulls me against him, and his hardness pushes into my belly, and we stand in the corner like this, by the sink, and if anyone peeped in we would look like sweethearts, and I wonder for a moment is this what my sister does with her Sam? If it is, what does it matter, they love each other, but I do not love Morris Jacobs.